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Does the Kinect Make Microsoft an Arts Benefactor?
>> MIKE: Here’s an idea: The Kinect has made Microsoft a modern day arts benefactor. theme Up until recently, if you wanted to wave your hands around in the air and have awesome stuff happen, you had better be Tom Cruise investigating some precrime. That is until Microsoft perfected some killer gesture recognition technology and packaged it in a cheap and, more importantly, easy to interface with, doohickey. The Kinect is a super smart piece of XBox 360 hardware which lets you dance like a fool in front of your television and control a video game while you’re doing it. The thing that’s really amazing though is that while Kinect’s crazy smart motion tracking robot brain is great at letting you bowl at home, it turns out it’s also perfect for making incredibly complex interactive artworks and crazy-bananas visuals. Soon after the Kinect was released, leet haxor Hector Martin developed an open source driver for it, meaning that no matter what techart platform you’re using, you would be able to see all of the voice: awesome and complicated stuff that it sees And for digital artists everywhere, this is stupid exciting. Having made a piece of technology so useful to the arts makes Microsoft a sort of benefactor. Sure, it doesn’t look exactly like old school benefaction. Microsoft isn’t King Ludwig the Second who not only paid for stagings of Richard Wagner’s operas, but also paid off all of the composer’s debts. Or Lorenzo de Medici, patron of this little artist, maybe you’ve heard of him, Leonardo daVinci. singing But today’s art world doesn’t look much like it did back then either. Sure, you can always make it rain, but what about developing tools that artists can actually use. Microsoft’s development of the Kinect has a predecessor in the heyday of Bell Labs resident artist program. The labs at Bell where a hugely influential technology R and D center. Yes, for snoozy junk like telephones and fax machines... snoring But also for important, early digital artist like Lillian Schwartz, Robert Whitman, and Lori Speagle who were able to create artworks of a technical complexity unheard of outside the walls of Bell. In his essay Portrait of the Artist as a Young Scientist, Ken Knowlton described Bell as the epitome of free exploration into how the world did or could work. As of late, Bell’s impact on the art world has slowed down, but in a way, through the development of the Kinect, Microsoft has continued Bell’s mission of furnishing artists with awesome technology. Except instead of one artist at a time, it’s all of them all at once. And instead of having only a few highly specialized machines in New Jersey, Kinects are available at your local Fun Game Co Land Stop. But at the same time, it is made by Microsoft, a company whose other technological achievements include Clippy and The Blue Screen of Death. skipping Corporate involvement in the arts is complicated and it’s super easy to flex your skepticism muscle whenever a company gets involved in a super hip and totally neat artspace. And tech artist probably wouldn’t say that their careers rest on the on shoulders of corporate giants. But let’s be honest, I didn’t make this camera, you probably didn’t make your own computer and it’s unlikely that you make your own paints or even wind your own pickups. Russian novelist, Ilya Ehrenberg said that every master knows, the material teaches the artist. As the arts and technology continue to friend it up, our materials are becoming such that artists are enthralled about exploring and learning with them but aren’t able to actually make them. So in a way, aren’t the companies that do develop these technologies benefiting the arts? It feels really weird to say this, but hey, thank you Microsoft. What do you guys think? Are huge technology companies like Microsoft arts benefactors? Let us know in the comments. And if you like us you should let us know that you like us by clicking the like button that’s how you let us know that you like us. Also subscribe. List of people who have a lot opinions about nail art: you guys. Let’s see what you had to say. PallaTheDancingCow had a lot of questions. So let’s answer them. Neither, sort of, depends but probably not, could go either way, no and macaroni paintings! TheHaberdasherie makes a really interesting connection between the economics of fashion and function. koen8993 and darkdeath6627 say that art and craft need one another, that they’re symbiotic. Also I really like the point about every great sculpture needing a pedestal, it’s really interesting. saranated says that nail art is art because experiencing it snaps you out of the everyday. I’d buy that for a dollar. Saiyuki989 brings up Don Judd’s A Good Chair is a Good Chair which is one of my favorite collisions of fine art and craft. If you haven’t seen it you should look it up on the internet. TehComentar’s comment...tary, I always thought the exact opposite actually, but that’s me. We can still be friends. To VMLM3, point number one: Love William S. Burroughs. Point number two: this is called the Phenomenology of Perception and Maurice Merleau Ponty wrote and awesome book on it, it’s pretty nerdy but it’s really good. To nickwoo2, triangle. And to everybody, triangle. theme Category:English Category:Complete